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A few weeks ago over at Donnas forum a thread discussingHotForex gained momentum. I didn’t think much of it at the time, there are so many brokers out there no one can keep up with all of them. And it is rare that they are anything worth thinking about either. Since then I’ve been checking the thread now and then and it seems people are pleased with their experiences. There are also very favorable reviews at Forex Peace Army, a site that usually is on the negative side (common human behavior to only report negative events of course).

The last thing that really spurred my interest was something I saw just today thou. They are now featured on CashBackForex and give 0.4 pips / lot back. I’ve asked how this applies to the Currenex account type at HotForex but still haven’t gotten an answer, hopefully it is valid regardless of account type (Update: Yes it was). The Currenex account is a ECN with $10 / lot traded ($5 per side) in commission, that with a rebate of 0.4 pips would be $6 / lot. The spreads and execution are supposed to be very good. Minimum deposit is $500 and minimum lot size is 0.1.

In order to get the rebate you have to register at CashBackForex.com of course and follow the instructions posted there. I’m thinking about checking it out.

I’ve been hearing a lot of different suggestions about the best brokers for the Year I’ve been involved in automated Forex trading (It’s only been a year? Really? My memory plays tricks on me it seems). GoMarket AUS have always been suggested by some, but I never got around to actually test it in any serious way. I have now and I will start a live account there. On paper and in demo trading it is nothing short of awesome.

GoMarkets AUS constantly have among the best spreads on basically all pairs (Majors and Exotics, especially ones with AUD involved). If you go to MT4Spreads and check out for example EURUSD you’ll likely see something like this.

What is important to understand then is that GoMarkets doesn’t take commission when trading. All the other brokers on that list, except Alpari UK, does. That means that even thou IamFX for example has a tighter spread you will have to pay them to trade it, and in that case it equates to almost 1 full pip in commission cost. The price is roughly the same for all the others.

Another important thing is that if you choose to sign up via CashbackForex you will get 0.35 pips back, effectively making the spread right now a very low 0.65! You can get cashback on other brokers via CashbackForex as well, but my research show that none comes close to the effective spreads offered by GoMarkets when commission and cashback is applied. They even beat my low commission favorite JadeFX.

There are three additional points that really make GoMarkets AUS stand out I think:

Possibility to have Swap-free account (fee is payed instead). Excellent for grid and longer term traders.

Possibility to open Nano-account making it possible to trade very small lots (0.01 of $10K lot, IE just $100)

Proper regulated company in Australia

My main problem is that I already have four active live accounts, and I don’t want to add additional funds to new ones right now. But I hope that I can force myself to withdraw funds somewhere and wire it down under.

So, head over to CashbackForex and signup for GoMarkets AUS. It’s real easy.

I wrote about decreased cashback at Alpari UK about a month ago, when Cashbackforex stated that it would only pay 0.1 pips back. Now they’ve increased it to 0.25 pips. This is still down a lot from the original 0.42 pips of course, but this was enough for me to reevaluate my decision to close the account. I will keep trading it now. Performance of FAP Turbo and MegaDroid is good enough to justify it. I probably will fund the account at FXCM UK also eventually, but now I’m not in as much of a hurry.

It might seem like nothing, but cashback is serious money when trading scalpers. Don’t underestimate it.

I got a email from the guys at Cashbackforex stating that Alpari UK have lowered the cashback for them, so now they are just able to give 0.1 pips / lot back. Alpari is motivating the change by saying that they’ve lowered the spreads. Sure they we’re lowered a bit last fall, but not really 0.32 pips in average I think. This unfortunatly makes Alpari UK quite uninteresting as a broker (it was just okay before).

So, what’s the best alternative? I would say FXCM/UK via Cashbackforex. They offer microlots now (at least if you sign via the guys at Cashbackforex and deposit at least $1000. Follow the instructions at the site). They have good spreads and you get 0.6 pips / lot back. FXCM also has great support. I will start an account at FXCM/UK and start unwinding my Alpari UK account.

I just checked out my Paypal history for last year to see what I used it for. Mostly Forex related stuff actually. Buying robots, paying for VPS services and getting cashback. It’s the last one I just now fully realized how big of a deal it is (or can be atleast). During last year, since April 26th when I opened my Alpari UK live micro account, I’ve recieved $909.31 from Forexcashback.com in cashback. That is awesome for a account that currently holds just about €1000 (about $1430 today). Also, I had recieved $141.24 from the Aslan Group for my Forex.com/UK account, but that isn’t quite as impressive of course because that account right now have a balance of $3600. For my ECN broker JadeFX I have no cashback, since they don’t accept IBs (Introducing Brokers, or partners like Cashbackforex.com). But on the other hand they have very low spreads and charge just $5 / lot in commission.

So, unless you trade a low-cost ECN broker like JadeFX you should definitely secure a cashback deal. Currently Cashbackforex.com offers 14 different MetaTrader 4 deals with most of the big names, even some ECNs like GoMarkets and FXCBS.

Okay, this is really getting annoying. Third week in a row ends bad. But this time there’s really a huge difference in the results between my live accounts. Enough to just stop MD on Forex.com/UK now. It still crashes almost daily and now it isn’t even doing as well as Alpari UK when it doesn’t crash.

Alpari UK live account

As you can see the week started of nicely with about a 10% gain up til Thursday night. The problems started when MD had open positions during the day and the trend was going the wrong way. If I had manually intervened and closed the positions early Friday morning the account would have made a profit of about €40 instead of a loss of €20. But I don’t want to close orders opened by EAs, that’s their job. I’ve also learned now that MD closes order after exactly 12 hours if still open, regardless of the current profit/loss. Had I known that I would probably have put a trailing stop on it say and hour before… Perhaps I should do that in the future.

FAP Turbo didn’t do much at all this week. It just managed to break even. It was MD that did all the trading in the account.

Forex.com/UK live account

This is we’re the real losses start. For some reason MD did much much worse on this account than on Alpari UK, with the exact same settings. I am running it without Stealth mode since MD crashes so frequently. I am not saying that the broker have used this information to manipulate prices to hit S/L:s, but there is definitely something going on here. I am going to stop trading MD on this account. As I have been demo’ing MD Pro on a Forex.com/UK account without crashes I will try out Pro on this account starting next week. I will trade EURUSD, EURCHF and USDCHF. If that doesn’t work either I don’t know about this broker…

So all in all, terrible week, again. Third in a row. Starting to loose faith in these bots… On the bright side thou, cashbackforex.com paid me my cashback for Alpari UK account this week. $144 free that I wouldn’t have gotten unless I used them as affiliate. Great stuff. When running bad it softens the blow, and when running good it’s just extra money. Don’t trade on accounts without rebates when they’re available